Recording » Kristie Addison

Enemy is here!

Music, NZ Music, Recording, Song Writing 3 Responses »

Aug 142008

Enemy is the rewrite of the theme song I wrote for Erik Hogans game Derelict. It will soon be available for download from Amplifier, and eventually from iTunes.

Special thanks again to Michelle Klaessens (The Rock Factory) for a fabulous mastering job, Mark Towl (Stapleton) on drums, and Mike Johns (Revolution Brother) on lead guitar.

The Gear (because recording is always just an excuse to play with fun things!):

The song was entirely recorded and mixed at home in Cubase, with my ancient Tascam US122 USB interface. I used Adobe Audition for a little wave form editing in the form of noise removal on a funny hiss from the piano (must try solve that some day).

The Drums are recorded from the line out of a Yamaha DTXpress electric drum kit – thanks to Go West Music Henderson for the loan.

The piano is a line out taken from my Yamaha CLP-230 Clavinova via a stereo headphone output

The rhythm guitar is my 1999 Ibanez RG520 (V7 and V8 pickups) played through my Peavey Triple X head and Peavey 5150 cab, which is mic’d up with an Audix OM2 dynamic mic and an Audio Technica AE6100 dynamic mic.

The lead guitar is Mikes Fender Strat played through his bizarre set-up involving an amp that’s rewired to bypass some bit of it and another external unit. I’ll have to ask him about it sometime because I didn’t pay much attention at the time.

The vocals are me singing though an Audix OM2 straight into the interface, that was turned up to the max to get a bit of distortion going on. (In hindsight this was probably not the best way to do it! )

Yamaha DTXPRESS IV Electric Drum Kit

Gear Reveiw, MIDI, Recording 3 Responses »

Jul 242008

I borrowed a Yamaha DT Xpress 4 for some recording tonight, along with a drummer since drums are not really my forté. I thought an electric drum kit would be perfect for an evening recording session at home, as it wouldn’t keep the neighbors up like an acoustic kit would.

I wasn’t familiar with the kit before we started, so when it arrived I was actually expecting a USB port for MIDI. But unfortunatly only the higher models that come USB equipped (so I hear). The kit does have a MIDI out, but no MIDI in so my cunning trick I was planning was foiled from the beginning. (This cunning trick would have involved recording the drums on a midi track, quantising and editing to my satisfaction then running the MIDI signal back into the kit and this time recording the audio output. It’s a very cunning trick that works quite well with keyboards. )

Instead of the cunning trick I just recorded straight from the line out into my USB interface. I was really impressed with the easiness of the whole process. Just two leads. Not ten mics and ten mic leads and ten mic stands and endless soundchecks. And the whole kit folds down so easily that you can carry it up the stairs in one trip.

Obviously an electric drum kit can not replace a really nice kit in a great studio, but for home recording I think it’s a really great idea. I loved the samples in the DTXpress, it has some that are cheesy and fun and some that are very usable. While I probably wouldn’t go out and buy this particular model myself, as I definitly want a USB port (or at least a MIDI-in as well as a MIDI-out) after playing round with it I am definitly keen to try out some of Yamaha’s other electric drum kits to find something that suits my purposes.

Pitch Correction in Adobe Audition

Adobe Audition, Pitch Correction, Recording 5 Responses »

Apr 172008

I have noticed this search coming up a fair bit in my stats, so thought I better write a post on it. I’m gonna grab a vocal line from something I’m writing at the moment, and run through using the Adobe Audition Pitch correction plug-in. I am using version 1.5, but version three is out now hopefully the operation will be reasonably similar.

You can not use the Adobe Audition Pitch Correction in real-time in the multi-track window. You have to select the track you wish to pitch correct, and double click it to go into the edit window. Here is the vocal line in the song without pitch correction.

It is best to pitch correct the vocal track line by line. Select the first line, then go to pitch correction. The Automatic function can be very good if you know the key you’re in, I find it a little unreliable if I use the chromatic scale setting. I am singing in A Major for this piece, but there are some parts of the song where I need to sing a C natural which is not in the key of A major, so I can’t just pitch correct the entire song to A major. However, I can pitch the first line to A major. The next line, I can adjust the pitch manually by selecting the manual tab, finding the note that needs tweaking and then adjust the envelope as shown in the picture. So I can go through the entire song quite quickly line by line either adjusting to the key signature, or manually adjusting any notes that either don’t fit the key signature or are too far off.

Here’s the corrected vocal line, it’s just done roughly because it’s only a rough vocal take for a demo of a song. And no amount of pitch correction could make a rough vocal take sound great.

Extreme pitch correction can be used as an interesting effect… In adobe audition just turn everything up to max and pretend you’re Daft Punk, or Cher, or a robot.

The RPM Challenge – Post Mortem

Recording, RPM 4 Responses »

Mar 012008

Well, The RPM challenge is over, and while I didn’t complete it in time I feel it was definitely worth while attempting it because I have written a lot of new material that I otherwise would not have.

Next year, I think I would do a few things differently to make sure I finished in time.

Not starting a week late. I started a week late this time, because I heard of the RPM for the first time a week into February.

Not spend so long on songwriting. I spent so long writing, demoing, then rejecting songs, that I planned to do most of my proper recording and mixing in the last few days. This backfired terribly when I got the stupid flu and spent the last few days lying on the couch feeling like death microwaved on high for 30 seconds.

Take it more seriously. Probably the biggest reason I didn’t finish, is simply the fact that I didn’t make it my number 1 priority. If I had taken it more seriously, I would have been forcibly removing visitors from my home – family or not, recording on those last few days no matter how sick I felt, and recording in the evenings without worrying about annoying the neighbors.

I had actually been planning on having a proper album finished by June, so this was good motivation to get some more material together, and I now have a few new songs that I’m quite keen on (and quite a few I’m not!).

[Actually, if I had really low standards I could just send in ten demo's I've done, but nah. Not gonna happen ]

Work in progress – new song to critique

Recording, Song Writing 2 Responses »

Jan 062008

This is a new song I’ve been working on. It’s had almost ten different versions, and this is the rough of the version I’m probably going to go with. It’s almost a bit too “easy listening” for my personal tastes, but I think it’s probably the version most likely to get me in with a chance at a NZ on Air grant (Muh huh huh haaaaaa).

Cubase vs. Adobe Audition

Gear Reveiw, Recording 3 Responses »

Dec 162007

Naturally, i’d rather have Logic, Protools, or something decent. But for something on a limited budget I’m hard pressed to choose between them. Luckily I have both….

I bought Adobe Audition 1.5 for a spectacularly cheap student price. Student discounts rule! Since then they’ve brought out version 2.0 which I’ve used at a friends studio and I hear rumors that there will soon be version 3.0 (which makes my meager 1.5 sound awfully crappy).

Cubase comes free with audio interfaces by Tascam, Lexicon, and Yamaha. You can buy it on it’s own too, if you really fancy. Most interfaces come with the ‘light’ version, but that is still very good. And it’s a bargain if you get something like a Lexicon Alpha for only $349nz. Though, personally I’d go with an interface that at least has phantom power – eg Tascam US-122. Which I have got, and it does me well. For now…. admittedly I do want something bigger and shinier with ten ton’s of inputs, and jack outputs instead of RCA’s…..

Anyway, back to my subject at hand – Cubase vs. Adobe Audition….

Adobe Audition seems to be much better for mixing in. By better I mean; it’s really user friendly, it has a really good waveform editor, lots of built in vst plug-ins, an excellent pitch correction function (IMHO waaay nicer than le ProTools one) unlimited tracks, lockable effects for when your computer can’t handle ten million reverbs in real time. Good stuff.

But Adobe Audition isn’t without fault. (Now I’m talking about version 1.5 here – if newer versions are better then yay for them ) I wish, oh how I wish, that Adobe Audition did Midi. How can I record cheesy synths, and drum machine drums if we can’t do midi? I also wish Adobe Audition had a proper grid system for editing things to a click. And I wish I could solve my Adobe Audition recording latency problem.

On the things Adobe Audition lacks, Cubase comes to the rescue. Writing with midi controllers and VST plugins is easy breezy lemon squeezy with Cubase. Even blondes like me have very little trouble. The grid is great for those quick “can’t be arsed” copy&paste demo’s. And I’ve never had the slightest problem with recording latency on Cubase. Though admittedly both programs were equally bad for monitor latency, but that doesn’t bother me so much. Who needs monitors anyway

But Cubase is a damn pain to mix in. The panning is all wrong, the bus’s are a pain in the neck, I can never get my head around the automation system. And horror of horror – I get a limited number of tracks and effects per track! How can I go completely overboard when I have limitations like that!?!?

So, neither program is close to perfect, but I’m having a good run lately by recording in Cubase, and then mixing in Adobe Audition. (And then completely screwing everything up by mastering in an old version of wave-lab that’s quite possibly from the 90′s.)

Every time I record I end up wishing I had more money to spend on gear (Specifically LogicPro… Oh yeah…) But if you’re thinking about getting some cheapy software for yourself, I’d recommend going with Cubase to start with. You can do some pretty good stuff with it if you keep it simple.

And there’s always the spectacularly free Audacity. Which keeps getting better and better I’ve noticed.

Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha

Kristie Addison

Enemy is here!

Yamaha DTXPRESS IV Electric Drum Kit

Pitch Correction in Adobe Audition

The RPM Challenge – Post Mortem

Work in progress – new song to critique

Cubase vs. Adobe Audition

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